


The Box

by TurtleTotem



Category: Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Brothers, Gen, Raith Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-22
Updated: 2012-01-22
Packaged: 2017-10-29 23:20:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/325288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TurtleTotem/pseuds/TurtleTotem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thomas Raith gets a blast from the past when Lara decides to clean out the attic. (Set between <i>Dead Beat</i> and <i>Proven Guilty</i>.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Box

A hatbox. That's what the driver of the black car was holding out the window at me. A dirty, battered hatbox. Warily, I let my hand fall away from the pistol in its holster. Not everyone felt the need to be armed when walking the dog, but not everyone had the enemies — or even the sometimes-friends — that my brother Harry and I did.

"My lady's regards," said the driver, and now I recognized him as one of Lara's men. My relaxation became — somewhat — more sincere. But I didn't take the box.

"What's the occasion?" I asked.

"She was cleaning out the attic."

"What?"

Mouse snuffled at the box noisily, and did not growl; probably not a bomb, then. Not my sister's style, anyway.

"Cleaning out the attic," the driver repeated. "The box is yours. She thought you might like to have it back."

Startled, I saw that he was right; that the box was labeled _Property of Thomas Raith_ in my own handwriting, albeit a slightly younger version of it. A dusty old memory stirred...

"Thank you," I said woodenly, but Lara's man was already driving away, the hat box now resting in my hands.

I cut the walk short; Mouse didn't seem to mind, snuffling curiously at the box as we hurried back to the apartment. Harry, thanks be, was not at home — some case or other had kept him running the last several days. Thus my walking his dog.

When I came through the door, however, I was startled to find him sprawled on the couch, looking somewhat more rumpled and harried than usual, and reeking of smoke.

"Hey, bro," he murmured, half-opening an eye. "'Sup?"

"Are you all right?"

"Yeah. Finally got the bastard. Doin' good." His eyes closed again. Mouse flopped onto the floor beside the couch with a satisfied whuff.

"All right then," I said after a moment, and closed the door.

I set the box on the kitchen counter and regarded it uneasily. The packing tape holding it shut had cracked and curled with age; the merest touch would open it. I tried to remember what was in the box. Something important, something I had feared my father would find, had hidden so completely as to very nearly forget it... Lara, Lara had told me to hide it...

By the time the box was open, the memory had returned, flooding back on the scents of dusty attic furniture and fear. Lara had _not_ told me to hide it. She had told me to burn it, get rid of it. _If he catches you with this, any of this, it's your life, Thomas. You think they'd want that?_

They. My brothers.

The first thing my hands found was a sepia-tone photograph in a tarnished silver frame. Two dark-haired young men, grinning as they leaned against a gleaming Model T, arms flung around each other's shoulders. They looked hardly more than boys, though even Alan had been over thirty, and Henry decades older. Ah, the advantages of a well-fed demon.

Had it already begun, when this photograph was taken, the chain of events that would kill them both? How did the cause and effect go — Father's suspicion, his sons' rebellion, which had come first? All I knew of Henry was that he had attempted to overthrow Father, and died for it, decades before my birth. Judging by the irrational extent of Father's paranoia, later, it would not be hard to convince me that Henry had never intended to do any such thing.

The easy, impudent face in this photograph was my only image of Henry. Alan's face was hardly clearer in my mind, we had spent so little time together. My main memory of him was not his face but his hand, gloved and huge, engulfing mine as he lead me through the Christmas crowds...

I dug through the box with one hand, my eyes still fixed on the photograph. Yes, there it was, the rounded spindle-like shape of the top Alan had bought me that day. Leading me down the cold, crowded, slushy sidewalks, we had passed a store window filled with the sort of high-quality old-fashioned toy that takes you back to a simpler time, if you're willing to pay through the nose for it. Train sets, miniature villages, intricate dollhouses — and this top, made of painted wood and metal, that not only spun but flashed tiny sparks when one pulled the string. I remembered begging for it, with no serious idea of success — my mother had firmly denied me any new toys, with Christmas so close — but to my surprise Alan had acquiesced, probably to shut me up.

Taking Little Brother downtown to see the Christmas decorations was a cover, of course. He had gone there to meet someone. Four years old and transfixed by the lights and wreaths, the toys and music and men in elf-suits, I had paid little mind to the man who walked with us without seeming to walk with us, who exchanged tense muttered words with Alan and never made eye contact.

"The old man wants a coup, I'll show him one."

"What's a coo, Alan?"

"Hush, Tommy, never you mind. Go look at those tops over there, aren't they something?"

Alan seldom had two words to say to me. But that day he had taken me wherever I wanted to go, bought me everything I dared ask for — not only the top but a Santa hat and hot cinnamon bun — and kept his hand around mine so I wouldn't be lost in the crowd. Later, when the other man had gone, he even skated with me at the mall ice rink, laughing and tugging me along when I was frightened by the slippery surface beneath my feet.

"Come on, Tommy, I won't let you fall!"

The top that fit so comfortably in my hand now had been a heavy two-handed burden then, when I clutched it throughout the entirety of my brother's funeral, hardly a month later. Did they tell me his car had slid on the ice, gone off a bridge, or did I extrapolate that from the mere word "accident"? Had anyone else at that funeral believed it was an accident? My sisters and remaining brothers, even my mother had been pale and tense, her hand on my shoulder tight and shaking. I couldn't really remember what sort of relationship Mama had had with Alan, or any of her strange so-much-older stepchildren. Had she grieved for Alan? Had Alan's death been her first clue that my father was not what he seemed?

Breathing carefully, as if I couldn't quite remember how, I put the top and the photograph aside and reached back into the box.

Three books, another photograph — this one an unframed snapshot — and some gaudy men's jewelry.

The books were collections of poetry — Tennyson, Browning, Shakespeare's sonnets. I opened one and stared at the nameplate. _Property of Victor Raith, Professor of Literature, University of Chicago._ I flipped a few pages, and caught my breath at the sight of Victor's handwriting in the margins, pointing out themes and symbols, underlining his favorite passages. For a moment I could almost hear him, almost see him, tall and spare and bespectacled, always neat as a pin, his voice quiet but not soft, no, quiet and hard and cranky and whip-like.

"Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut, Thomas. You'll stay alive longer that way."

Victor had been older than Alan, older than Henry, older even than Natalia. He knew Father and he knew how to survive — knew that the only way to survive was not, for one moment, to be a threat. Perhaps I asked too many questions about Alan's death — that was when Victor took an interest in me, began to spend time with me, to teach me, to take me up to his attic rooms full of books and oddments and "keep me out from underfoot."

When my mother left, it was Victor I ran to with my confusion and hurt and fear, Victor who assured me Mama loved me and said he was sure she was all right and would come back when she could. Even when it became clear he was lying, I loved him for the lie.

Because of Victor, I survived my childhood. Lara looked out for me where she could, but she was powerless before Father. Only Victor had enough years of quiet, calm usefulness to intercede for me when I drew Father's attention, in those years when he was particularly ill-disposed toward Maggie LeFay's son.

"What did I tell you, Thomas? What did I tell you about staying alive? Eyes open. Mouth SHUT."

In the end, he didn't follow his own advice. There was a woman — a student of his, Lara said, and neither of us knew whether he had been in love with her, or if his regard was more paternal. But somehow Father saw her, and wanted her, and Victor wouldn't let him have her. And that was all it took.

I was twelve, then. Old enough to understand that there had been no accident.

Without Victor to look after me, Lara stepped up to the job — and with her, Byron, Lara's twin and general partner in crime. Byron was everything Victor was not — bawdy and loud, cheerful and wild and exuberant. Byron was _fun._ He was always up to something, some prank or scheme or grand idea. He had the perfect clothes, the perfect hair, the jewels and medallions and earrings that could choke a horse, and always he had a beautiful girl or three hanging on his arm. He was a bright spot in my grim world, and though he always seemed to be frantically busy, he somehow found the time to ruffle my hair, take me to baseball games, teach me dirty jokes.

When my demon woke, and I thought I'd gone insane, that I was possessed, that I was losing myself forever — when my father brought me a trembling, frightened girl and watched me drain the life out of her — it was Byron who talked me down from the roof afterward. Who taught me it didn't have to be that bad, that there ways to do what I had to and still live with myself. That life could not only be livable, it could even be fun.

And he taught me a new way to be safe, in my father's house — the harmless playboy, the thoughtless feeding machine whose biggest concern was the new spring fashions. No threat to anyone. I took the best of what Victor had taught me, and the best of what Byron could teach me, and a smattering of advice from Lara, and used it to stay alive.

I eyed Harry — still snoring away — and set aside Victor's books, picked up the photograph that some amiable stranger had snapped for us at Disney World. Lara, Byron, myself, and little Inari, sweaty and smiling, waiting in line for Thunder Mountain. A peculiar little family-within-a-family, the four of us, pretending like mad that we were normal and happy — for Inari's sake, or for our own?

Lara had been brave, to associate so closely with me. Elisa and Natalia could see the writing on the wall — that Father would work his way down to Byron and me eventually, and they didn't want to be in the blast zone when it happened. They took pains for Inari, but all they could do for their brothers was try not to draw attention to us. Their artistic silences were favor enough, on occasion. I don't know if Lara would have done the same, if Byron hadn't been there — but Byron _was_ there, and she couldn't turn her back on him.

Nor he on her, in the end. I never knew details — never wanted to know details. I didn't know if he could possibly have missed the exact process by which Father kept his daughters under control, when I had figured it out long ago. I didn't know why he chose that day to intervene, or how he imagined he could defeat Father. But whatever mad impulse, or madder plan, drove him to Lara's defense that day, not very long after I turned twenty, it wasn't enough. Father won. Byron died. And when all his things vanished from the house, swiftly and without commentary, as Victor's had, I could salvage only the one photograph, and a handful of costume jewelry. A hatbox in the attic, the only proof that my brothers had once existed.

 

Harry muttered and twitched on the couch, and with a start I began piling things back into the box — but he relaxed again, and fell into quiet snores. Mouse watched me silently, indifferently.

There was no reason for me to be guilty and secretive about this box, not here. Not anywhere, now — Father could no longer hurt me, now that he was finally experiencing the ghastly puppet's half-life he deserved. But old habits died hard, and... after all, what good would it do to talk about it, to wallow in the griefs of the past? Victor and Byron were gone. End of story.

But Harry was here.

I closed the box, interlocking the flaps so it couldn't pop open, and slipped it into the very back of the pantry. I'd find a better place for it later, but since Harry did as little in the kitchen as he could get away with, it would do for now. I crossed the room, and stood looking down at my one remaining brother, his ridiculously long limbs curled up like a child's on the couch.

Victor and Byron — and maybe even Alan, in his way — had protected me, looked out for me. I hadn't been able to return the favor. Harry, too, had done... astonishing things, things I didn't deserve, for my sake. For a wonder, he was still alive.

And so help me God, he was going to stay that way.

Harry stirred again, as I tucked the comforter around him on the couch.

"Thomas? That you?" he slurred.

"No, it's the tooth fairy."

"Ugh. Nasty things." He managed to open one bleary eye. "Need you to do somethin' for me, later..."

I waited, but his eyes were closed again, his breath heavy. I answered anyway.

"Sure, Harry," I said. "Anything."


End file.
